1972 Letter of Archbishop Vitaly of Montreal to Matthewite Archbishop Andreas (Anestis) of Athens

 

5th July 1972

Sts. Athanasius of Athos and Sergius of Radonezh

 

His Beatitude Kyr Kyr Andrew
Archbishop of the True Orthodox Christians of Greece
of the Jurisdiction of the late Archbishop Matthew
22, Veranzerou St., 6th Floor, Office 5,
Athens, Greece.

Your Beatitude,

First of all, on behalf of our Holy and Sacred Synod, I ask that my humble person be permitted to congratulate Your Beatitude on Your enthronement enacted by the grace of God, of which we learned through Your letter of 22nd May, 1972 (no. 804/22), and to humbly pray that, by the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, the accomplisher of the Sacred Rites, this act be unto the glory of the Triune God, the salvation of all the true Orthodox Christians under You, and to the establishment of our un-innovated Faith.

As regards Your beloved epistle of May 18th, 1972 (no. 803) to the Most Reverend President of our Holy and Sacred Synod, Kyr Kyr Philaret, in that he is abroad and will not be here present for a considerable time, I am answering in his behalf, lest Your aforementioned letter be delayed in reply.

That the calendar innovation of 1924 brought about a schism in the Holy Orthodox Church is a fact that is clearer than the sun, and no Orthodox with intelligence can be ignorant of this sorry reality.

Lest it be unjustly thought by some that the Holy Russian Church — which our Holy and Sacred Synod authentically represents — has supposedly not partaken of the bitter taste of this sad schism, allow me to mention to Your Beatitude only two of the many misfortunes which we, as Russian Orthodox, have suffered because of this act of the innovating prelates Meletius Metaxakis and Chrysostom Papadopoulos of sorry memory.

The Russian Orthodox of Bessarabia who did not accept this blasphemous innovation were mercilessly persecuted by the innovating Roumanian Church. Despite all the difficulties brought about by World War II, our Holy Synod took a clear stand on this matter and sent not only priests to minister to the true Orthodox Christians in Bessarabia, but also a Bishop to ordain priests who steadfastly held to the piety of the Fathers, so common to all Orthodox.

The Great and Sacred Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, more commonly known as Valaam, was harshly persecuted by the godless Communists. Whereupon, the fathers abandoned Northern Russia and, like a new Israel, fled through the frozen wilderness, bearing on sleighs the precious Relics and sacred Icons of our Saints, and established themselves in Finland, where they founded a sound monastic community with hundreds of fathers and many monastic edifices. This was the so-called “New Valaam”.

Yet even there, the fathers were cruelly persecuted, no longer by the godless — which was not to be marvelled at — but by the innovating Finnish Orthodox Church, which was then taken under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and which, not content with its own acceptance of the innovation, sought by persecution to impose it upon the true Orthodox Christians also, who maintained unwavering obedience to the doctrines of the Fathers.

At first, the fathers resisted mightily, but the devil, the hater of good, then attacked them on the front of human weakness. In truth, the frequent interference of the Finnish Church by means of police and other oppressive measures weakened some of the fathers, finding them deficient, on the one hand, in the requirements of the angelic, monastic life and, on the other hand, exhausted physically and spiritually by their first affliction and exile. We all know that it is truly hard when one is tested twice at the same place.

In this manner, a division was formed in the community. The fathers who purely and sincerely confessed the Tradition had no communion whatsoever with those who, out of weakness, had become innovators. Thus, once having entered the monastery, the division, in a corrosive manner, henceforth worked to bring about its dissolution. Certain of the fathers fled and live even now in other monasteries in Europe, America and elsewhere. Yet the monastery was disbanded and the holy Relics of our Saints are now found in museums. Our Greek brethren have told us of similar instances as regards the Sacred Monastery of Stavrovounion in Cyprus, on the Holy Mountain and elsewhere.

There, where atheism failed, therefore, the innovation succeeded. It is not, therefore, correct for one to think that there has ever been a time when we, as Russian Orthodox Christians, did not ourselves live and experience the drama of the calendar change.

The subject of the calendar was already set in order at the time of Pope Gregory, when the Orthodox Church was called upon to embrace the aforementioned change. From that very moment, the Church gave Her decision; the Church condemned, the Church anathematized the innovation. And the Church’s conscience confirmed this condemnation in many ways and in many places, by means of many acts, declarations and efforts, even up to and including the past century, during which the Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus, in a Pan-Orthodox Council, condemned every innovation.

But even in the twentieth century, on the Holy Mountain, where, although our Synod was not represented, the Serbian Church nevertheless, which at that time had given us hospitality and with which we were in agreement spiritually and ecclesiologically, was represented. The most revered Bishop of Ochrid, Nicholas Velimirovich did not agree to concelebrate with the other innovating hierarchs at Vatopedi, but rather asked that the Chapel of the Mother of God of Consolation (Paramythias) be given him, where he celebrated alone.

Of late, the Russian Monastery in Bulgaria, which was founded by Archbishop Seraphim, who had a righteous repose and who was a hierarch of our Synod, did not follow Patriarch Cyril in the slippery and soul-corrupting path of innovation and schism.

Immediately from the beginning, therefore, our Holy Synod was conscious of the fact that the calendar problem was a cause of schism, and our first Shepherd and Prelate, Metropolitan Anthony of blessed memory made this known to Patriarch Meletius Metaxakis through Archbishop Anastasy, who was in Constantinople at that time.

At the recently convoked Great Council of our Hierarchy, which met in the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Montréal, which is the episcopal see of my humbleness, the centuries-old condemnation of the papal calendar was repeated when we synodically condemned the heresy of ecumenism. In the detailed analysis and explanation of the latter, it was clearly demonstrated that the introduction of the papal calendar proved to be the door that opened the way to the heresy.

Wherefore, the Most Blessed and Venerable Shepherd and Prelate of our Holy and Sacred Synod was authorised to write His Second Sorrowful Epistle to the Orthodox Christians of every land, and in it, he carefully expounded the calendar issue and showed it to be the forerunner of ecumenism. Hence, it is manifest to all that by condemning this heresy, its cause is also automatically condemned and repudiated as inconsistent with the dogmas of the Catholic Church.

Immediately, from the very beginning, therefore, our Holy Synod, having a correct and exact awareness of this matter, never recognised the calendar change as a final and accomplished act. Rather it always awaited the convocation of a free Pan-Orthodox Council, not that it might any longer deliberate on the issue — for the Holy Church has already, from the very start, given Her decision — but that it might reject this pervasive error and level its condemnation — no longer in anticipation, as in the past — but in censure of specific acts and decisions which have already taken place. I myself wrote a thirty-one page article on the calendar issue in 1953 printed in Sao Paulo, Brasil, and our Archpriest of blessed memory, Boris Molchanov, wrote a most enlightening article of twenty-seven pages defending our church calendar which I printed in our diocesan publication in 1961.

If, therefore, our Holy and Sacred Synod used a certain economy up to a point in its relations with other Churches, this was in hope of a convocation of a free Pan-Orthodox Council, which, for us, cannot be conceived of without the liberation of the enslaved Russian Church, which by Herself, as is known, comprises the greater part of the Orthodox flock, and which even now is oppressed by the well-known wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing and by the corruptive agents of the anti-God regime.

However, in view of the fact that the intended Pan-Orthodox Council is not only not about to be free, nor is about to condemn innovation and bring peace to the Church, but rather has gone over to the side of heresy; in obedience to our conscience as Bishops it is our duty to sound the alarm and call the God-loving flock to consistency in accordance with exactness, as regards the demands of the piety of our Fathers.

Even if up to the present our policy has not been wholly integral because of our special problems, which, in contrast to Your Beatitude, we are forced to deal with in practically every corner of the earth, our guiding policy, nevertheless, is easily discerned, and remains conscientious, being enforced and fortified by synodical decrees. No man, therefore, who, as a discerning Orthodox Christian wise in things that pertain to God, can be deluded or become confused, if he receives with discernment and with a good conscience that which is said, decided and enacted by us.

Wherefore, as many native-born Orthodox priests — whether they be Greek, Roumanian, Syrian or Bulgarian — who, for reasons of Faith, flee for refuge to the canonical jurisdiction of our Holy and Sacred Synod, these do we receive by absolution and blessing (kherothesia), after they have signed a declaration of Faith (libellus) and promised to preserve the traditional calendar as a condition sine qua non. And not only this, but even priests who, for reasons of Faith, have been defrocked by the Great Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople because they have withstood the heresy of ecumenism and modernism, have we, after a careful examination of the reasons of this defrockment, received as priests and as precious and blameless members of the Orthodox Catholic Church; and they celebrate the Liturgy canonically under the jurisdiction of our Holy Synod, being subject to its various local holy hierarchs.

As for those clerics or parishes of native-born Orthodox who do not accept the traditional calendar, these also we do not accept into ecclesiastical communion under the canonical jurisdiction of our Holy and Sacred Synod. Lest this should be considered mere words, behold the concrete examples of the Greek communities of Pennsylvania and Florida of the United States of America and of the Greek community of Stuttgart in Germany which were refused admittance into our canonical jurisdiction precisely because they would not accept the Julian Calendar.

What other proof, therefore, is necessary to show that — despite the fact that we have employed economy in various places and at various times, sometimes more leniently, sometimes more strictly — our Holy and Sacred Synod’s confession of its belief that the calendar change was a cause of schism is clear and consistent?

But does not even our involvement in the affairs of Greece supply the greatest proof of the purity of our confession? You Yourself bear us witness that, at the request of the true Orthodox Christians of Greece, we intervened ecclesiastically in the realm of the Greek Church. We did this, not out of sentimentality or for any other reason, nor because we had become acquainted with You beforehand, but because we were guided by our conscience as hierarchs, looking to that which would be to the profit and for the strengthening of the true Orthodox Catholic Church in every land. It is hardly necessary to say that, if one were to judge this matter from a human, and not a spiritual point of view, the reaction of many to this involvement of ours was rather unfavorable if anything. Nevertheless, we did what we believed was our duty, regardless of its consequences, and this — not because we wished to serve individuals, showing favor to persons, but because we wished to serve the Lord God.

If we later rejoiced at meeting and coming into ecclesiastical communion with the hierarchs of Your Sacred Synod — and here I refer specifically to the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Corinth, Kyr Kyr Callistus, and the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Cytius, Kyr Kyr Epiphanius, — we attribute this to the grace and benefaction of the Holy God. This joy, however, was neither the purpose nor the motivation of our Holy Synod’s actions as regards the affairs of Greece.

In conclusion, I would like to make known to Your Beatitude that a parish priest in Geneva, the Presbyter Basil Sakkas, who is a Greek Orthodox cleric under the canonical jurisdiction of our Synod, upon receiving the blessing of his local hierarch, Kyr Kyr Anthony, the Most Reverend Archbishop of Geneva and Western Europe, and with the blessing of his spiritual father, the Archimandrite Ambrose, sent me — in my capacity as a French-speaking member of the Holy and Sacred Synod — an extensive treatise concerning this subject, in which he sets forth the causes of the conscientious stand of the Greek True Orthodox Christians and wherein the subject is discussed from every viewpoint.

The English translation of the aforementioned treatise has received the blessing of our Most Blessed Prelate, Kyr Kyr Philaret, in the form of a prologue. In this explicit prologue, the opinion of all our Holy and Sacred Synod is expressed, which opinion finds its strength in the anathemas that have been declared concerning this subject and in the centuries-old, universal and synodical attitudes of the Orthodox Eastern Church. I believe this afored prologue will be useful in dispelling all doubt and may be used, in theory, as a definition of the Faith of our Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

In expectation of Your Venerable Beatitude’s joyous arrival in Montréal that we may become acquainted in person and concelebrate together to the joy of our Greek Orthodox flock, which received such great spiritual benefactions from the Sacred Service performed by the Most Reverend Metropolitans Kyr Kyr Callistus and Epiphanius during their stay in Canada,

I remain, with much love in the Lord,

Your Brother,

Vitaly, Archbishop of Montréal
and All Canada

 

Transcribed from a scan of the original.